Sheparding, Shooting, and Other Wonderful Things
by Undead Robot
Summary: Being John Shepard is awful at the best of times. Still, when life gives you lemons, you use them as the main ingredient for Reaper-killing explosives. (SI/AU)


**Prologue: In which I've got a plan, and it'll only maybe get me killed.**

* * *

When I found out I was born in a spaceship, my first thought was _'Bitchin''_.

When I found out my name was John Shepard, my first thought was _'I'm so fucked, it's not even funny.'_

"John? What are you doing?" I looked up from my Omni-tool, to see my mother raising an unimpressed eyebrow at me.

"Just messing around," I said, going back to my fiddling. "I found out that I can program it to make some holo-strings that make noise when you pluck them, so I'm trying to see if I can make a guitar."

My mother, Hannah Shepard, was the very picture of an iron lady. She had frown lines from a lifetime of following stupid orders and handing out orders to stupid soldiers, aiming her rifle, and kicking ass. Her short red hair had a few grey hairs from raising me; she had broad shoulders, and scars on her knuckles. There was also a scar around the right side of her right eye from a bad run-in with a gang of Batarian pirates.

At the time, I'd only seen her make a smile around five times. She was so disciplined, I was sure she bled regulations. This isn't say she was a bad mother; far from it. She was kind, affectionate, and bought me an Omni-tool for my tenth birthday, which was kinda insanely cool of her, since you could make a sword with those if you removed the civilian restrictions. She just wasn't a smiler.

"Really?" she looked at my Omni-tool as I finished the last touches, and the orange holograms changed shape. "Huh, didn't know they could do that."

"Technically, they can't," I pointed at the datapad on the table, next to a bowl of soggy cereals that I'd forgotten about. "I've been messing around with programming, just to see what I could do."

"And you made a guitar?"

"Also, Pong," some more clicking, and a screen popped up, showing the classic game. "But that's basically an obligation for anyone that gets into programming."

"Of course," mom huffed. "John, you _do_ realize you're ten years old, right?"

"So?" Reapers didn't give a damn about age. "I just wanna learn as much as possible."

Mom ruffled my hair and walked away.

* * *

"This behaviour is not acceptable!"

I was twelve, and very much in deep shit.

See, I get bored easily, if I don't have anything to do. In my previous life, that came out as excessive reading. In this life...

"Why would you hack into _every single Omni-tool_ and make it play that infernal song?!"

The infernal song in question was the Nyan Cat song.

"I was bored," I shrugged.

My principal pinched her nose. "Then why not focus on your studies?"

"I mean, I kinda already did everything?" I pulled out the Math workbook and handed it to her. "I finished that like... a week ago? No, wait, less than that? I finished it, is what I'm saying."

She started paging through it, and I left the other workbooks on her desk. My plan required me to be _even better_ than the original Commander Shepard, which was a real tall order. So, first thing I did was train my mind as much as possible. I finished all my books, then I asked some third year kids for their second year books, and some fourth year kids for their third year books.

I was hoping someone would notice I was working on stuff meant for someone two years older than me in the middle of class, but even in the future the education system blows, so I decided to start a mess.

Also, well, I was _really_ bored.

"... John, how would you like to move up a few years?"

"I'd like that very much, please."

A little later, I was waiting outside the principal's office, while she talked to my mom.

I had spent one year figuring out how to encrypt a text file as much as possible, and the other year actually writing that file.

My knowledge of the Mass Effect story was pretty limited; I'd only actually played the first game, though I knew the general gist of the second game, and how the third game ended (how could I not, with how much everyone hated it?) thanks to wiki crawls and TV Tropes.

Originally I wrote down everything I needed to do to get the Council to take action, to kill the Reapers, and to save as many people as possible.

I added to what I could as I learned more, but the plan hadn't strayed much from what I had at the beginning. I also added some tidbits I remembered, like the names of my future crew, the kid that dies in the first mission, in which planet Liara's mom was (the icy one full of capitalistic fucks), and what the Reaper's plan in the first game was.

All factors in my master plan.

... no, I'm not telling what it is. That'd ruin the dramatic tension. C'mon, that's Writing 101.

* * *

I finished regular schooling by the time I was fifteen. I would have done it sooner, but my mom didn't let me just finish school when I was thirteen. Something about needing to relate to people or something.

To be fair, my people skills might have to save the galaxy some day, so I really needed to get working on them.

Hm, maybe I should read 'How to Make Friends and Influence People'? Nah, that book's a pain.

Anyways, after I was done with school, I started working as a mechanist around the ship I lived in, patching up stuff and generally making myself useful. With my mother's help, I also started working out.

I taught myself how to hack a computer from the other side of the room, how to overheat someone's weapon with a few clicks through pre-prepared programs, and how to beat the ever-loving crap out of someone with my bare hands. Well, I didn't do it all on my own. My saint of a mother patiently helped me out through my endeavors.

For three years, I just trained and worked, until I my eighteenth birthday.

Or rather, the day after my eighteenth birthday.

"Are you really sure about this?" mom asked, as we stood outside the enlisting office.

"Yeah," I nodded. "Gotta carry the family legacy, right?"

"No, not at all." My mom grabbed my shoulders (I was taller than her, so it was a bit awkward, but I didn't want to ruin the moment with a smartass comment) and looked me dead in the eye. "You don't have to do this, John, I won't begrudge you choosing a carreer as a mechanic or anything else."

"I know, mom," I smiled at her. "But if you can do the right thing, you do it."

She huffed. "I should have never let you read those damned comics."

I laughed, and we walked in.

* * *

Boot camp, even with my mom's training, was brutal.

We got up at 0700 sharp every morning, and God have mercy on your soul if you got up a minute late.

After that, we ran laps around the base for an hour. If you collapsed, you had to clean the bathroom, and if you thought your shit stank, you never had to smell clean a public bathroom. Then, it was off to gun training, and then...

Well, let's just say Full Metal Jacket was more accurate than it should have been.

The point is that after some grueling 15 weeks of training, I was sent somewhere else.

The Interplanetary Combatives Training program, also known as "ICT", "N-School", or "the villa".

Turns out, I did so well in Boot Camp I got sent for Special Forces training, which, while welcome, was surprising.

I'd noticed how I'd developed a surprising talent with the pistol I'd trained with, but I hadn't realized I was top of my class until I got reassinged.

Hm, maybe some of Shepard's natural Ace-ness passed on over? Hell, I'm not complaining. A bit weird, and it left me with some Imposter syndrome, but whatever.

The plane landed in Rio de Janeiro, and I was sent off to Vila Militar.

And _man_, if I thought boot camp was bad?

* * *

"Okay, tell me what we have." I said, glaring down at the map we'd taken from one of the other teams.

War Games in N-School sucked all kinds of monkey balls. We had to work for twenty hours a day, starting at 0400 in the morning and going until 0000 hours.

The students had to lead teams of their peers in mock battles, armed only with paintball guns, and very little food or sleep. Luckily, I had an entire life worth of experience with insomnia, so little sleep wasn't that much of a problem.

In my first War Game, there were six teams of six, including me and mine. So far, we'd taken out most of one team with zero losses, by employing guerilla tactics like ambushing at supply drops, stealing other's food and ammo when they got careless, and more.

"Team Red and Team White have formed a truce," my XO, a soldier named Briggs, explained, pointing at where the two teams were stationed. "We've seen a lot of arguing though. The only thing holding it together is that they don't want to deal with the other teams alone."

"Hm," I tapped my chin. I pointed at another mark that indicated a camp, which was surprisingly close to the alliance. "Who are these?"

"Team Blue, they're not allied with anyone, but they managed to grab the most ammo out of anyone. The other two know that they're there, but they don't wanna start anything just yet."

A smile grew on my face. "Perfect."

The thing about the paint rounds we were using was that they were color coded for our convenience. My team got brown paint, Red team got red paint, etcetera.

But, we'd been stealilng some ammo from the other teams, Which meant we had their colors. So, I sent two of my team -Hebert and Toomes, my best sharpshooters- armed with sniper rifles and camouflage, and ordered them to fire on each team with the other's paint from a middle point between the two.

After taking down a few soldiers, they ran away as stealthily as possible. Once the three teams almost wiped each other out, we swooped in and finished them all off.

"Good game, guys," I smiled, walking around the 'corpses' (pissed-off and paint-covered enemies) and going for their food. "No rez, though."

"Fuck you, Shepard," Guerra, the ironically Latina leader of the White team, spat at me. "_Hijo de puta tramposo_."

"_Todo se vale en el amor y la guerra, querida,_" I shot back, thankful for having been Argentinean one lifetime ago.

Guerra blinked, surprised, before marching off, muttering under her breath.

"You know she's gonna get back at you for this, right?" Jones, the leader of team Red, laughed. "Can't wait to see how that goes for you."

"Yeah, yeah."

After that, my team rested a little while Briggs and I updated the map.

"That was great, but we still have to deal with the Black and Green teams," I scanned the map. "Are they still where we left them?"

"They should be," Briggs pointed at the two marks on the map. They were a fair distance from each other, and even further away from us.

"Alright then," I cleared my throat and turned to my team. "Okay people! We've got five minutes of rest, and then we got to move! Eat now, and stock up on ammo, especially if it's not brown, understood?"

"Yes, sir!"

We'd already weakened the Green team by taking out four out of six soldiers when we ambushed them at the supply drop, so we mowed them down as the sun set. Once midnight arrived and we could rest, I told my team to do so. After that, taking out the Black team was a joke.

Turns out, whoever won the War Games got two extra hours of sleep and more rations, which made me very popular with my team and very hated by the others, that got stuck running laps while we napped.

* * *

I became an N1 at 19, and I spent the next three years working my way up N-School.

Most of the people that I trained with to make N1 made the rank: Guerra, who never let go because I beat her, and dedicated herself to beating me. She was kinda like a rival. Then there was Emiya, the former leader of Team Green, who was a lot more chill. Briggs, who left the villa after making N1, same as Jones.

Valdez, Samson, DeWitt, and a few others also made the rank, but I never got along with them quite as much as with Guerra and Emiya.

"So, let me see if I got the plot right..." Emiya started, as we ran laps. Talking was actually encouraged, since it made running harder. "This guy travels back in time to stop a robot designed by an evil A.I. from killing the mother of the leader of the resistance, right?"

"That's pretty much it, yeah."

"Then why is it called The Room?"

"Look, do you wanna see the stupid movie or not?"

"Yeah, sure."

Later, when he discovered I hacked his Omni-tool so he couldn't switch off the movie, he dragged me into sparring to kick my ass. I mantain that it was totally worth it.

"So, how's Engineer training going?" Guerra asked me, as we walked to the base from the drop point. She'd helped me out of the lake I fell I after I cut my way out of my parachute.

"I only caught a few bullets last time," I noted cheerfully. "And I improved my decryption program."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I was having trouble with multi-layered adaptive quantum antiviruses, but I added a modular cyber-matrix that hotwires the program and let me in."

"Cool."

"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

She sputtered. "Wha- Look, just because I can use a shotgun and you can't doesn't mean I'm dumber than you!"

"For one, you had no engineer training, so it'd make sense if you thought I was saying nonsense. Second, I _was_ saying technobabble nonsense."

Guerra didn't say anything, before punching my arm and calling me a jackass. I told her I liked our little chats, and she shoved me in a river we were walking by.

Guerra left N-School when she made N4, and Emiya left when he made N3, but I didn't. I had to be better than the original Shepard, and that meant getting my 7.

* * *

The courses for N2 through N5 were pretty different to what I expected. Instead of twenty hours of training every day in Vila Militar, we got shipped off to different planets to learn everything a Space Marine Special Forces Unit might need, and some more things.

We learned zero-G combat, military free-fall, jetboot and jetpack flight, combat driving (I didn't do great in this), CQC, linguistics, frontline trauma care for human and alien biologies and assault procedures.

We also received training according to our specialties. As a mechanist, I was taught to disarm a bomb while under enemy fire, to fix a MAKO while under enemy fire, and to decrypt a computer -you guessed it, while under enemy fire!

We didn't work twenty hours a day, but rather twenty-one hours five days a week. Sometimes we were locked in small cabins and made to study different cultures as to not embarrass humanity in front of the Council races, sometimes we got tossed out of airlock and told to survive the fall with a parachute and a knife in case you got stuck to anything.

They threw us into fire and told us to burn off anything that wasn't useful. I almost died a few times, especially when I fell in a lake and got trapped in my parachute.

A year after that, I made N6.

* * *

N6 training came in two parts: surviving in fuck-off-nowhere asteroids, and tossing us in conflict zones throughout the galaxy.

I wasn't that good at the survival parts, frankly. I mean, I wasn't dead-last, which got you kicked out of the program, but I didn't thrive, either. I lasted an average five weeks out of seven.

We got dropped in different parts of an asteroid with no nav data, enough oxygen to last two days, and we got the general direction of where we could find rations.

Ideally, no two trainees ever met, since we got dropped off quite a distance away. Still, some coordinated to meet up and work together. They were typically the firsts out the door.

One usually ended up betraying the other, and that was strictly against the rules. The other got kicked out for running out of supplies.

Tough, but I couldn't say I didn't see the sense of it.

Anyways, where I really shined was the conflict zones. Until the day everything went to shit, I'd been deployed to three locations with different squads of former trainees at N-School.

In the first one, I participated in the Skyllian Blitz, in Elysium. I remembered that Elysium was important, but I didn't really do anything that stood out. I shot a bunch of enemies and evacuated civilians. I got some commendations for focusing on the civvies' safety, but besides that, I just dicked around. It was a big fight, sure, but I didn't exactly turn the tide.

In the second one, I just fought a ton of pirates that were squatting in an asteroid. Nothing of note happened, except that there was this one human with some kind of implant over his eyes? I wasn't sure what he was doing, but he was definitely not Alliance and in a pirate base, so I shot him. He ran away, but I'm pretty sure I caught him in the ass with a bullet before he left and got in a MAKO. We tried to track him down, but he was a better driver.

The third one, well, the third one was pretty fucked up. There was this crew, I'm not sure if they were slavers or what? They consisted mainly of humans, krogans and a few turians, but they were lead by a quarian. Now, they'd been hitting different colonies, not distinguishing between species, and kidnapping as many as they could. At first they were thought to be slavers, but the people they kindapped didn't turn up anywhere, so that was out.

Later, their base was discovered, and I was part of the team that went in to kill everyone. Turns out, the quarian leader was experimenting on everyone they kindapped. They were attempting to combine medical chemestry with quarian mechanics to make some kind of Captain America Super Soldier serum, something that permanently boosted quarian immune systems so they wouldn't have to live in suits. The krogan were lured in by the promise that it'd make them _even better_ at fighting, plus cure the genophage. The humans and turians just liked the idea of being super soldiers.

Of course, it didn't work. There was a room in the base full of all the failed experiments; all of them horrifically mutated. The quarian bastard had apparently taught himself about medicine, just for the idea. When we interrogated him on the way to the Citadel, he explained that he'd come up with the idea in the middle of his Pilgrimage, when he couldn't find anything worth taking back to the Fleet.

I didn't have any part of it, but when I and some of the more '_morally strict_' members of the squad left the room for bathroom breaks, snack breaks, or ice-making breaks, we came back to find that the quarian had apparently slammed his own head against the floor, breaking his mask and taking his own life. An attempt to escape justice.

Of course, that's what the less '_morally strict_' members of the squad said, but you know how it goes in the navy with homosexuality and horrifying acts of vigilante justice: don't ask, don't tell.

It didn't sit right with me, but then again, neither did experimenting on random people.

Anyways, after that, it was a while before I got sent to a new conflict zone. A colony called Akuze.

* * *

"You've got to be kidding me."

"Guerra! _¿__Como estas, loca?_"

"_Bien hasta que aparecio tu horrenda cara,_" she nodded her head to her ship. "Come on, you won't believe who your C.O. is."

"Lead the way," I said. I really had missed her, it'd been years. "How are you?"

"Pretty good," she showed me the three stripes on her sleeve. "Made Commander, Ensign."

"Yeah? I made N6, and I'm well on my way to N7, little miss N4."

"Ass." Eventually, her stoic face broke into a grin. "I missed you, you shit."

I bumped her shoulder as the decontamination finished and the doors to the ship opened. My jaw dropped when I saw who was on the other side.

Emiya "Fuck-mothering" Josuke, standing there in uniform and smirk, nodded at me. "Surprise, bitch."

"JOS!" I almost hugged him, before I saw the four stripes. "Holy- you made Captain?!"

"Damn straight!" he laughed, walking over and wrapping me in a one-armed hug. "And as soon as this ship leaves dock, you're gonna treat me like on, but until then, how've you been? It's been so long!"

"I've been good. Man, I have some stories for you two, N6 training is _nuts_!"

"So I've heard."

He gave me a tour of the ship, introducing me to the crew and explaining that he'd actually _asked_ for me when he was told to pick an N6 to take into danger. He had to promise to be fair with my review, so no slacking off for me.

He told me to get familiar with Toomes and Jamison, the two squad members that would join Guerra, him and I into the conflict zone.

"What's the conflict, anyways?"

"You like mysteries? Because we got a regular whodunnit," he sent me a file through the Omni-tool. "There's this colony, Akuze? Well, now it isn't."

"Isn't what?"

"It isn't, period. It completely vanished. No messages, no signal, no nothing. Even the marines stationed there vanished."

"That _is_ serious. Also, '_no nothing_' is a double negative."

"You're a double ass," he said. "Anyway, it had upwards of nine thousand people in there, so the Alliance decided to send us Special Ops babies to check it out."

"Sounds sensible," I looked over the file. The name Akuze was familiar, but why? I was always terrible with planet names, even when it hadn't been over 23 years since I played it. The file didn't show anything special about it. The atmosphere was breathable, and it was built on solid flat ground. "What do you think happened?"

A shrug. "That's what we're supposed to find out."

I really wish I'd had a better memory.

* * *

Emiya's ship, the _Guevara_, landed a few clicks from the mystery colony, so we walked all the way there.

"Hey, Shepard," one of the other guys, Liutenant Junior Grade Toomes, walked over and bumped my shoulder. "You're an N6, right?"

"Yup."

"Was Captain Emiya any good at the excercises?"

"One of the best." I smiled. "Not at my level, tho."

"Eat me," said Captain replied, flipping me off without even looking.

"So, do you have any good stories from our captain?" Toomes asked. "I mean, Guerra never says anything, and the Captain's obviously not going to talk."

"Well..." I scratched my chin. "There was this one time with an Admiral by the name of Hackett."

"_Shepard,_" Emiya said, in that warning tone that your parents used when you were about to do something stupid.

With practiced ease, I ignored him. "The good Admiral had come down to the villa to see what the next generation of Special Forces looked like. Of course, he wasn't impressed with our ugly mugs, so he just talked shit about us the whole time he was there, right in front of us."

"He was an ass," Guerra snorted. Judging from the faces some of the squad made, they didn't expect that kind of comment from her.

"I like the guy," I shrugged. "Anyways, I'm stuck there between Guerra complaining about the guy telling her her aim sucked, while Emiya's just talking about how he most definetly did not need remedial courses on biotic basics."

"I _didn't_."

"Right, so eventually I get sick of them, and I tell them about how this was all _obviously_ a test, and how we were supposed to showcase the skills he critiqued. Now, the guy told me I couldn't program for shit, which meant I had to hack his own Omni-tool. Guerra had to shoot something out of his hand, and Emiya had to do something _really_ impressive with his space magic."

A few snickers started appearing, while Emiya and Guerra just groaned.

"So, we spend the whole night planning, which wasn't what I wanted, but even better because of how it'd end up. I don't think I have ever, in my natural life, put as much brainpower and effort into something as I did that planning session. I don't think any of us did.

"So, the next day, Admiral Hackett's Omni-tool starts beeping like crazy, making all sorts of noises -most of them pulled straight from some of the less SFW sides of the extranet, if you catch my drift.

"Trying to make sure nobody thinks he's jacking it in his room, the Admiral leaves, locking the door behind and trying to find someone to help him with the _'infernal device'_. Naturally, that's when we strike.

"Using some unprecedented control of his mass effect fields, Captain Emiya right there picks the lock. Then, we spend about five minutes tying every piece of underwear the Admiral had into a single string. And the string was connected to five balloons full of Helium."

"Where did you get all that?" one of the crowd asked.

"It's amazing what you can get on the extranet for the right price." I chuckled. "Anyways, my virus turns off, which means that Hackett's Omni-tool isn't giving any more trouble, which in turn means the good admiral can look up and see the balloons carrying his privates away.

"I've never seen a man of his age run as fast as he did that day, trying to grab a hold of the rope. When he was just about to catch it, a single bullet cut the rope, leaving the admiral to fall on his face with a useless chunk of empty rope on his hand."

At this point, they were all openly laughing, except for Guerra and Emiya.

"Insubordinate," Emiya said, almost to himself. "That's what I'm gonna put in his report. Insubordinate."

"Anyways, we walk up and line up in front of the guy, side-by-side. And they're looking _so proud_ while I'm just there, trying not to laugh.

"They started talking, about how they figured out his test, and they ask if they did good. Hackett just stares for a straight fucking minute before asking us what the hell we're on about. That's when I saw how the lights turned on over their heads, and they turned to stare at me with the most horrified looks on their faces.

"As you can imagine, I broke down laughing."

Much like the rest of the group, some of which had fallen down.

"I worked really hard to get their respect, you know?" Guerra asked me.

"Oh well," I shrugged. "_Asi es la vida._"

"_Te odio, _Shepard."

Once they were done laughing, we kept walking, though there were still some giggles.

Eventually, Guerra and Emiya grew some humor and started sharing their own stories, about the crew, about me, and about anything.

Lots of laughter all around, until we made it to Akuze.

...

How do I explain it?

We were walking up a hill, in a straight line for the colony. Someone was telling a story about some sort of incident at the showers, I don't recall the details.

But I remember I was laughing. I was laughing, feeling happy to have reunited with my friends, and then we got to the top of the hill and...

And then I...

...

It felt like, for a second, all jokes stopped.

I was one of the first to see Akuze, and I was left there, with an open mouth and widening eyes. Others kept laughing, and I felt sick at it. How could laughter exist in the same universe as that? The two felt anathema to each other, like the universe was too small to fit a contradiction that big.

Every building was demolished. There wasn't a single greenhouse, house, or processing plant left standing. The only manmade object left was a large generator, but you could see blood splattered on it.

There were more than a few holes on the ground. Like sinkholes, except the dirt looked like it'd been pushed upwards.

Eventually, I realized everyone had stopped laughing. I looked around, and saw that everyone was staring.

Emiya recovered first. "Shepard, take two with you and go left, try to look around for what did this. Guerra, you take the right and do the same, take as many as you need. The rest, with me."

We followed his orders, not a single word spoken in reply.

'_Akuze_,' I thought, desperate. _'What the fuck was special about Akuze?'_

I was chewing my lip as I directed the two soldiers with me to hide behind any cover as we advanced, with me remaining at the front as much as possible.

'_Think, dammit!_' I thought, passing by another of those reverse sinkholes. _'Underground, kills a whole colony, Akuze. How does it all-'_

I froze in place. The other two stopped and asked me what was wrong.

I needed to get us out of there, and I had to think of a good reason.

"Whatever did this wasn't even vaguely anthropomorphic," I started, walking to the nearest hole. "This hole doesn't look like it was made by a machine, so it was done by something's natural abilities."

"Er, Shepard, that seems like jumping to conclusions, doesn't it?" One of them said.

I tried to push down my rising panic and to think of a good lie, but a loud rumble under us did my job for me.

We all exchanged looks.

"RUN!" I shouted.

I'm not sure sure if they completely processed it, but they followed the order. Immidiately, I had a finger to the side of my helmet,and I was trying to contact Emiya. I was rewarded with a loud screeching noise.

"Fuck, comms are jammed!" I growled.

I looked over and saw Emiya and his squad walking towards the generator. I pulled out my pistol and fired into the sky, getting his attention.

I saw Emiya look at me, before trying to use his comms. From the way he pulled back, his were jammed too.

"RUN!" I screamed. "WE NEED TO RUN!"

In the game, you didn't get much warning for when a Thresher Maw was gonna pop up. Maybe you saw the flat ground and got suspicious.

In real life, there _was_ a small warning.

The ground shook under us, and the rumbling returned.

But it wasn't under _us_.

The ground under Emiya's group started bloating, and for a second, I think I got a glimpse of Emiya's confused expression before the ground exploded and a Maw ate him.

"NO!" The scream tore out of my throat.

Immidiately, I pulled my pistol and started firing on the monster. I saw small holes appear on its hide, but it didn't even bleed much. It just turned towards the noise, and I heard a retching sound coming from it.

"MOVE IT!" I shouted at the other two, who'd been staring at the Maw. They snapped out of it and dove out of the way, just in time to dodge the beast's acidic spit.

Gunfire rang out, and I turned to see Guerra and her team opening fire on the Maw, running towards us. She had eight soldiers with her, all aiming pistols or assault rifles at the thing.

I followed suit and opened fire with my pistol.

'_Damn_,' I thought, almost detached. '_Really wish engineers got more than just stupid pistols._'

The monster started to look bothered by the damage, but it didn't sink underground. It just spat acid at Guerra's group. They all ran away, but five still got caught by it, and we heard them scream as they slowly melted and died.

"Fuck this," I spat, and I started running at the monster. It was about three meters away from the generator. The generators used by large-scale colonies like Akuze tended to be more than a bit explosive if you screwed around to much with them.

"SHEPARD! WHAT THE _FUCK_ ARE YOU DOING?!" Guerra shouted.

"I HAVE A PLAN!" I screamed back, reloading my pistol and resuming fire on the Maw. "PULL BACK!"

They did so, and the Maw realized I was the only one still bothering it.

It spat acid at me, but I dove away and kept running. For a moment, I pictured the same situation, but on Earth and surrounded by Reapers.

'_Fuck that_,' I thought. '_I'm not getting caught by a laser, and I'm sure as hell not getting caught by some acid fucking spit!_'

I took out a grenade and I threw it at the monster as soon as it was in range, looming over me. I triggered it as soon as it touched it, and the Maw actually groaned in pain.

It pulled back to body slam the ground where I was, but I ran around it and dodged the hit. The ground shook so much I actually fell over, but I got up and kept running. The whole time, I kept thinking '_can't stop, can't stop, can't stop_' desperately.

I grabbed another grenade, and when I was walking past the generator, I threw it at the Maw again.

"Come on!" I shouted, opening fire on it again with my stupid pistol that I was changing for a machine gun if I survived. "Come on and slam me! You know you want to!"

It turned around, and I triggered the grenade. It groaned in pain again, and it leaned back.

"Come on..." I said, walking backwards, still firing. "Come on and do it, you fuck!"

It dove forward, and I ran back, trying to get out of range.

_**BOOM!**_

I flew forward, from the seismic shaking and the explosion of the generator. I tumbled on the ground, and screamed in pain when a piece of sharpenel flew into my face, just above my eye.

I was there, panting, before I got on my knees and looked with the eye that wasn't covered in blood. There sat the corpse of the Thresher Maw, covered in burns, sharpenel and its own blood. My ears were still ringing from the explosion, and when I tried to get up, I lost balance and fell. I tasted bile, and everything hurt, but when I looked up, I had to smile.

Guerra, and the other soldiers were running towards me.

I'd saved them. I wasn't the sole survivor. With just a little bit of foreknowledge, I'd changed fate.

'_It _can_ be done,_' I thought, and a little relieved laughter escaped me. '_I can save the universe!_'

I fell sideways, a dopey smile on my face.

* * *

"... And it is with great honor," Admiral Hackett said, as he pinned a medal on my chest. "That I award Ensign John Shepard with the rank of N7, for his corageous attitude and quick thinking in the face of previously unseen horrors."

He saluted me, and I returned the gesture.

"If you pull another prank," he hissed. "I will court martial you so fast your head will spin off your neck."

I forced down a smile. I really liked Hackett.

The crowd applauded, and I walked down the stage to hug my mom.

"My baby, the super soldier," she said, though tears shone in her eyes. "I'm proud of you, you know that, right?"

Fifth time I saw my mom smile.

"Yeah," my smile turned brittle. "I wish I could have warned Josuke, though."

Her smile turned sympathetic, and she hugged me again. The funeral service had been three weeks before the award ceremony. Guerra was in charge of the Guevara now. She'd hugged me goodbye after the funeral, and we exchanged a little mail from time to time.

"Do you know who they're assigning you to?" Mom asked, as we walked down to the docking bay.

"I'm supposed to meet Captain David Anderson in two weeks at the Citadel." I smiled with confidence I didn't feel. "Here's hoping for me making a good first impression."

"Oh, honey," Mom smiled at me indulgently. "You've never made a good first impression in your life."

She was right. When we met, I accidentally spilled coffee on him.

He wasn't _too_ mad about it. I only had to sweep the floors for a week, standard Earth time.

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**** This fucking idea wouldn't leave my head, so I'm starting another god-damned story.**

**So, yeah, SI for Shepard. Here's hoping it's good.**

**There'll be some AU elements for things that just don't make sense to me, but besides that, I'll try to follow the story as much as possible, butterfly effect aside.**


End file.
